Psychiatric Institutions in Ghana: Towards an Understanding of Erving Gofman's Typology

Abstract

The main thrust of this thesis has been to examine Erving Goffman's typology of a Total Institution in the light of Ghanaian psychiatric institutions. In the typology Goffman classifies mental hospitals as Total Institutions. The typology came into being when he was examining psychiatric institutions in western cultures. A central problem that was posed in the Thesis was to see whether Goffman's typology has applicability in the Ghanaian cultural environment taking into consideration its western origin and the improvement in psychiatric medicine in recent years. Two hypotheses which were investigated and confirmed by this study are: 1. "That the psychiatric hospitals in Ghana are closed systems in which inmates do not have an easy contact with the wider society due to lack of resources". 2, "That the psychiatric hospitals in Ghana have partially renounced their custodial nature and have resorted to diagnosis treatment and rehabilitation of patients as a result of the emergence of new ideas in the field of medicine. The findings in this Thesis are that the mental hospitals are characteristically custodial establishments in spite of recent improvements in therapeutic techniques and therefore in principle confirm Erving Goffman's model. The study has suggested then that since the Ghanaian psychiatric hospitals like those elsewhere are only keeping the mental patients in custody there is the need to strengthen their rehabilitation programmes designed for the patients to enable them to function physically and socially in society.